Archive for anxiety

On this Thanksgiving holiday I want to share my favorite gratitude practice for receiving the goodness of life. Did you know that the human brain is programmed to recognize negative experiences far more than positive ones? Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, PhD writes that a positive experience needs to be held in awareness for 5-20 seconds in order to register in our emotional memory while a negative experience registers instantly. While this is an adaptive function based on physical survival, it can also lead to feeling caught in challenging emotions without being able to access a balance of joy. Luckily we can intentionally choose to notice positive experiences in order to more fully receive the good in our lives.

One of my favorite practices is called “Gratitude Notes.” Connecting with a sense of gratitude is a powerful way of focusing attention on the positive. This practice is so simple yet I have found it to be profoundly supportive in my own life. When I notice that I am feeling down or glum about life, I often resurrect this practice and find that within a few days my outlook on life changes.

All you need to start is a pad of sticky notes and a pen. I find that I enjoy the process more when I have a special pen solely devoted to this purpose.

I write my gratitude notes at the end of day just before bed. It only takes a couple of minutes. I write three gratitudes, one per sticky note. I start each note with the words “I am grateful for…” and then add something specific that I feel good about from that day.

Here are some examples of my recent gratitudes. I keep my gratitude notes on the lamp beside my bed because they stick best there. It is wonderful to wake up and see all of these reminders. I let the notes accumulate for a few days and then take them down and start anew.

So, if you feel you could benefit from a little more awareness of the goodness in your life, I encourage you to give this practice a try. If you do, I’d love to hear how it goes for you!

Lastly, see below for some special Thanksgiving gratitudes about what I feel most grateful for in my life today. How about you? What do you feel most grateful for in your life today?

Thank you for taking the time to read my Thanksgiving thoughts. Thank you for playing a role in the growth and success of my psychotherapy practice. And thank you for all of the large and small ways that your presence brings more goodness into the world.

Fear is one of the most primal emotions but it can get a bad rap. Intrinsic to the drive for survival, it propels the fight/ flight/ freeze response of the nervous system. The physical sensations (increased heart rate, muscular tension, shortness of breath) that many people attribute to anxiety are actually the body readying itself to flee from an attack. Similarly, feeling numb or emotionally shut down can be linked with the freeze response that causes predators to overlook potential prey. Unfortunately, these impulses for self-preservation are often seen as problematic symptoms and are not recognized for their biological origins.

While fear is a natural emotion in an uncertain world, people can sometimes view it as a weakness or a lack of emotion. In many ways, we are a culture that is phobic of fear. There are familial, societal, and spiritual messages that advocate controlling it, choosing love over fear, or “the only thing to fear is fear itself.” While there can be value in these messages, they also push this emotion further into the shadows, making it something to be condemned rather than honored for the important role it plays.

Mindfulness and Shadow Work® both offer a different perspective, one in which fear is a valid emotion that deserves to be honored and respected. Fear shows up when there is a lack of safety and as such, it is an important warning sign. Most of us have core parts of ourselves that originated in childhood as patterns of thought and behavior to try to keep ourselves safe in the world. As we mature and seek to grow and expand in our lives and relationships, these patterns of fear can seem like obstacles that keep getting in our way. The wisdom of Shadow Work® offers a way of honoring and dialoguing with these protective parts of ourselves so that they can learn to care for us in new and more effective ways. Mindfulness offers practices for finding more acceptance of the physical experience of fear without getting caught up in fearful thoughts and beliefs.

The next time you feel frustrated with a way that fear is showing up in your life, take time to reflect on where it came from and the protective role that it may have been playing in your life for a long time. Next take time to honor this part of you for the ways it has been caring for you. Finally, update this part of you about how it could adapt its’ strategy to better care for you at this current stage of your life. If the experience of fear feels overwhelming to you, try focusing your attention on your breath and your physical environment as a way to disengage from the fearful thoughts occupying your mind. Set the intention to be open and curious about the sensations you are experiencing while staying connected to your breath. If you’d like to learn more about Shadow Work® or mindfulness I recommend shadowwork.com or the books and teachings of Pema Chodron or Tara Brach.

In every moment our inner world is active with emotions (joy, anger, sadness, and fear), thoughts about past and future, and sensations in our body (pressure, aching, spaciousness, expansion, etcetera).

Modern culture, the media, maybe our families, our jobs, sometimes our peers ask us to be productive and to fit into a box of what kinds of emotions and expressions are acceptable. We learn to avoid our internal experience in order to try to fit in.

But this comes at a cost. We become anxious about our fear, depressed about our sadness, enraged about our anger. We don’t learn how to “be” with ourselves, with our dynamic inner world. It becomes like the boogeyman in our closet and we run from it. We do this through all kinds of addictive behaviors- drugs, alcohol, food, sex, love, TV, movies, internet, Facebook, overwork, perfectionism, etc.

Mindfulness is about pausing the urgency to escape, without making those urges wrong or bad. It is about becoming aware of what drives our own running… learning how to sit in the discomfort of that urgency without needing to run anymore. Mindfulness is about being willing to experience pain in life, because pain is an inevitable part of being human. But it is also about moving away from suffering, because suffering is pain + the belief that our pain is wrong. When we learn to sit with the pain, the suffering eases.

Right now, as you are reading this, can you pause and feel into your body? Maybe close your eyes… Take a few breaths into your belly. And just notice what is there, inside. What emotions are you experiencing? What sensations are present in your body? You could ask yourself, “What is asking for acceptance right now?” Can you welcome your experience, just as it is? And can you also give permission for the parts of you that want to change your experience, or to run away from it? As you move through your day today, I invite you to continue asking this question, “What is asking for acceptance right now?” This is a process of ever widening circle, allowing one part of yourself, one feeling to be okay and then another, and then another.

This is courageous work, to stop and turn to face ourselves in this way. And I believe that it is an essential part of returning to our own wholeness. I would love to hear about your explorations!

Did you know that the human brain is programmed to recognize negative experiences far more than positive ones? Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, PhD writes that a positive experience needs to be held in awareness for 5-20 seconds in order to register in our emotional memory while a negative experience registers instantly.

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Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

Pema ChödrönAuthor, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

Imperfection is not our personal problem—it is a natural part of existing.

Tara BrachAuthor, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Carl Jung

Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as they are.

Tara BrachAuthor, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.

Tara BrachAuthor, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.

Tara BrachAuthor, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

Pema ChödrönAuthor, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times